News about Librarian Union Activity. News about Unions for Librarians Supporting Workers. Continued by Union Library Workers after 6.13.2011.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Latham Challenges Conventional Wisdom in Library History

What a dissertation! I'm reading it and am amazed at the quality of Joyce M. Latham's research and her overturning of conventional wisdom.

Discussing historians like Raber, Wiegand and Harris who indict the library profession for failure to take stands on social issues, Latham sees these scholars as having blind spots. Her research demonstrates that librarians did engage on issues of race and class.

"The evidence demonstrates that front-line public librarians not only organized themselves in the face of economic challenge brought on by the Depression, but also engaged with the working classes of all races from a different perspective, which established an egalitarian platform of mutual influence. The affiliation of public librarians and library workers with the CIO white-collar movement recast the role of the public library as an agency of social justice."

Forthcoming article based on the dissertation, "So Promising of Success, " by Dr. Latham is in press for the Progressive Librarian30 (winter 2007/2008).

Joyce M. Latham, “White Collar Read: The American Public Library and the Left Led CIO: A Case Study of the Chicago Public Library, 1929-1952.” PhD Dissertation, University of Illinois, 2007.

==Editor.K. McCook, AFT Local 7463.===The list of links to websites of academic and public library unions was suspended due to lack of support to keep current as of 4.5.2010.The links, last updated in 2009, have been published as an appendix to the article, "Unions in Academic and Public Libraries,”in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. London, Taylor and Rutledge. 2010.